Hendrikje Nienborg, M.D., Ph.D.

The Visual Decision Making Section takes a comprehensive view to address how vision supports action: it combines the study of processing for the peripheral visual field, visually guided decision-making in diverse behavioral contexts, and adult neural plasticity in the visual system. Our lab uses computational, behavioral, pharmacological, optogenetic, large-scale electrophysiological, and, through collaboration, machine learning approaches to address the questions driving our research:how are cognitive and sensory signals integrated in the visual cortex, and how does this processing differ for the peripheral and central visual field?how do non-visual context, such as motivation, behavioral state or learning, and the involved neuromodulatory circuits influence the encoding of the incoming visual signals?how are these combined signals used to guide behavior in healthy mammalian brains?Answering these questions is aimed at improving our understanding of how these mechanisms fail in vision loss, and psychiatric and neurological diseases.

Dr. Hendrikje Nienborg received her medical and doctoral degrees from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, interrupted by a Master in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford, UK. She conducted postdoctoral work at the National Eye Institute and at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, before leading her own research group at the University of Tuebingen, Germany. She joined the NEI as an investigator in the fall of 2019 and became a Senior Investigator in 2024. Her research received funding from a K99/R00 award from the NEI, the Kavli foundation, a starting grant from the European Research Council and the German Research Foundation (DFG).